Blizzard Disciplines Over 480,000 Overwatch Players; Player Reporting Feature Detailed

PSA to all the jerks on Overwatch, stop it. You're slowing the development of the game and preventing us good guys from getting cool stuff!

That's essentially the gist of the new developer update from Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan. While most of Kaplan's developer updates give players insight on cool new features, game modes or even upcoming characters, the newest update details the toxicity level within Overwatch and the dramatic effects it's having on the game and the development.

As of now, the new player reporting tool that has been in the PC version for some time is now available on consoles. Basically, this means that if a player is taking the game way too seriously or is mouthing off, griefing other players or using language that many people would find inappropriate, well natured and honest players can report them to Blizzard. Kaplan notes that there is no button or easy fix to simply make toxicity go away completely, but this is a great start and already on PC, the team has disciplined over 480,000 players. As of right now, when a player that you've reported has been dealt some type of action, you'll be sent an email so that you know you made a difference. Kaplan said the team is pushing to have an in-game notification sent to the reporting player, so it's all in game.

Kaplan further explains that because of the increase of player toxicity and bad behavior, which required the team to build the reporting feature, he as a director of the game had to re-allocate certain team members to build it. He said that because of that, other features and modes that have been heavily requested, like a replay feature, had to be sidelined. In essence, the "good" players are missing out on cool new features because of the bad players.

So to sum it up, be nice.

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